A new type of nanocatalyst can result in the long-awaited commercial breakthrough for fuel cell cars. Research results from Chalmers University of Technology and Technical University of Denmark show that it is possible to significantly reduce the need for platinum, a precious and rare metal, by creating a nanoalloy using a new production technique. The technology is also well suited for mass production.

“A nano solution is needed to mass-produce resource-efficient catalysts for fuel cells. With our method, only one tenth as much platinum is needed for the most demanding reactions. This can reduce the amount of platinum required for a fuel cell by about 70 per cent”, says Björn Wickman, researcher at the Department of Physics at Chalmers.

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How can we burn natural gas without releasing CO2 into the air? This feat is achieved using a special combustion method that TU Wien has been researching for years: chemical looping combustion (CLC). In this process, CO2 can be isolated during combustion without having to use any additional energy, which means it can then go on to be stored. This prevents it from being released into the atmosphere.
The method had already been applied successfully in a test facility with 100 kW fuel power. An international research project has now managed to increase the scale of the technology significantly, thus creating all the necessary conditions to enable a fully functional demonstration facility to be built in the 10 MW range.

 

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By introducing defects into the perfect surface of graphene on silicon carbide, researchers at LiU have increased the capacity of the material to store electrical charge. This result, which has been published in the scientific journal Electrochimica Acta, increases our knowledge of how this ultrathin material can be used.

The thinnest material ever produced, graphene, consists of a single layer of carbon atoms. They form a chicken-wire structure one atom thick, with unique properties. It is around 200 times stronger than steel, and highly flexible. It is transparent, but gases and liquids cannot pass through it. In addition, it is an excellent conductor of electricity. There are many ideas about how this nanomaterial can be used, and research into future applications is intense.

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University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston scientists have unlocked mysteries of how the Ebola virus hampers the body’s natural defenses to speed the rate of infection and its accompanying lethal disease, according to a new report in PLOS Pathogens. The study was conducted in collaboration with the University of Washington and The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

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